[Noisebridge-discuss] Solar-power radios popping up around the Mission

[Dr. Jesus]

Don't click on the summary link, click on the other one.

On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 4:34 PM, Forrest Flanagan
<solenoidclock at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is there anything faster or better than a FOIA request for accessing this
> information?
>
> On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 5:37 PM, Dr. Jesus <j at hug.gs> wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 12:54 PM, Jonathan Lassoff <jof at thejof.com> wrote:
>> > On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 12:04 PM, Christie Dudley <longobord at gmail.com>
>> > wrote:
>> >> Well, obviously it's a mesh as it's JUST the antenna and the panel.
>> >> There
>> >> are a number of reasons that come to mind that they would use the solar
>> >> panels on a pole that has power (mostly having to do with
>> >> inter-departmental
>> >> politics and relations with PG&E) but the best reason I can think of to
>> >> do
>> >> that is for emergency services. Or alternately, non-city "services".
>> >
>> > This absolutely makes sense. If it's low enough power, I see no reason
>> > not to go this route, as it'll work even when PG&E doesn't.
>> >
>> >> Another thing that this reminds me of is the truck signalling on the
>> >> highways. (It's a national consortium for weigh stations, mostly.) It'd
>> >> be a
>> >> stretch to see how they might want to expand it into the cities.
>> >> However, it
>> >> looks like it's a 90 deg. polarization from those. It looks like the
>> >> FasTrak
>> >> antennas are similarly polarized.
>> >
>> > I suspect it is indeed an omni, as all the ones that I've noticed have
>> > been pointed directly downwards. The antenna for Fastrak and for
>> > Caltrans' traffic/congestion monitoring look like UHF or SHF Yagi Uda
>> > antennas pointing at people's dashes.
>> > I see no reason this couldn't be that, but it seems like the antenna
>> > design would have changed dramatically.
>> >
>> > At least in the mission, their installation seems well timed with the
>> > rollout of new parking meter heads.
>>
>> I just went up the construction scaffolding at 16th/mission and read
>> the labels on the devices.  The big ones seem to be 4.9 GHz to 5.8 GHz
>> repeaters for the public safety cameras.  The little ones are made by
>> a firm named novalab and are labelled with FCC ID XMPNL72742.  I don't
>> know what they are, but searching around it looks like streetline, the
>> parking meter people, use a 900 MHz mesh network which is probably
>> compatible with that hardware.
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>
>